Armageddon Time is the rare case where the bitterness overwhelms sweetness, and true enlightenment comes from rejecting nostalgia at every turn.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 19, 2022

Preteen drama is amplified by robust and fairly obvious musical choices, but more interesting is the sound design: the city is everywhere, grumbling and fractious, the sound of a short fuse burning out.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 20, 2022

Gray’s latest, Armageddon Time, is a flawed work. But it sees the filmmaker at his most vulnerable, as he twists the camera back on himself and asks: of all the paths that brought me here, how many were carved out by my own privilege?

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 18, 2022

Both young actors give strong performances, which is more than you can say for Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway, both laying it on too thick as Paul’s highly strung parents.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2022

Both a coming of age and an exploration of an era, this self-biographical reminiscence feels both regretful and hopeful – a filmmaker trying to make peace. It’s not sugar-coated, but it’s full of love.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2022

The real nourishment comes from unflinching honesty, served with compassion, insight, and a bit of sadness. In that sense, Armageddon Time is a full meal.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 12, 2022

His coming of age feels more like something out of the Marvel Universe than the childhood of a real living boy.

| Nov 11, 2022

Armageddon Time is emotionally honest storytelling.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 5, 2022

Am I bringing something to the table that keeps me from bonding with writer-director James Gray’s achingly personal – yet, to me, painfully pat – memory film? Or, to quote the Simpsons meme, is it the children who are wrong?

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 5, 2022

Sometimes it simplifies huge societal problems, but what makes it really great are the performances by Jeremy Strong, Anne Hathaway, and Anthony Hopkins.

| Nov 4, 2022

The movie still uses its young Black character as a prop to process white guilt.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 4, 2022

Gray isn’t just well-intentioned... while the world around Paul may want to move on from Johnny, we can’t.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 4, 2022

[Gray has] given his life story the tidy, well-meaning structure of a college admissions essay.

| Nov 4, 2022

Armageddon Time has a loose construction and a plot that follows natural beats rather than chasing grand, overly telegraphed moments. It comes back to themes of family, the promise of prosperity, and that precarious time in youth...

| Original Score: A | Nov 3, 2022

What it lacks in explicit moral structure the film more than makes up for in historic sensibility.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 3, 2022

Looked at yet another way, this is a film about the temptation to sell out, clearly an ongoing practical issue for Gray, whose instincts are far from commercial but who has never given up hoping for a mainstream hit.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 3, 2022

The self-congratulatory, back-patting nature of this film is what makes it so insulting.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 3, 2022

It's a subtle movie, and Gray has cast it beautifully, including another great, valedictory performance by Hopkins.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 3, 2022

Writer-director James Gray tells a personal story about class, race and survival.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 3, 2022

An alternately tender and candid glimpse of what it feels like to be told one thing while knowing the opposite is true deep in your bones.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 3, 2022